Final budget deal leaves 3 in 4 Ohio school districts with less

Thursday, June 27th, 2013 by Stephen Dyer

Yesterday, the House-Senate conference committee released final details of the state budget package that will be up for a final vote in both chambers today. While they added a small amount of additional per-pupil funding for districts with high poverty rates, the net effect is little change from funding levels in the Senate.

In all, 154 school districts (or roughly one in four) will get less state money than they got in 2012-2013 (when transportation and career tech money is backed out to allow for an apples-to-apples comparison). In fact, HB 59 now provides $47 million less for schools than the budget Governor Kasich introduced in February.

After $1.8 billion in cuts in the last budget, the approximately three-quarters of a billion in new money is an improvement (Republicans will call it “historic), but it comes nowhere near making up for the $1.8 billion in cuts contained in the last two year budget. As a result, approximately 3 in 4 school districts will received less state money in fiscal years 2014 and 2015 than they did in 2010 and 2011.